Are cats allowed to roam free in NSW?

NSW is an acronym for New South Wales, Australia. At 23rd September 2020, under the provisions of the Companion Animal Act 1998 domestic cats within NSW are allowed to roam free (laws change). And they can't be picked up by rangers because they might be someone's pet. They can't assume that the cats are stray and unowned just because they are outside. However, rangers can seize cats in areas where they are prohibited. These are areas such as wildlife protection areas, commercial kitchens, restaurants or cafés.

Feral cat in Australia. Image in public domain

Also, cats can be seized by rangers if they have injured a person or another domestic animal. Against that information, there is a general trend in Australia to restrict the movement of domestic cats and to regulate cat ownership in the interests of native species because there is concern that many native species are endangered and heading towards extinction in the wild. Small mammals are the domestic cat's menu. One player in that scenario is the outside domestic cat and the continent's 2 million estimated feral cats. The authorities want to slaughter all of them.

It is sensible to ensure that inside/outside domestic cats are spayed and neutered, microchipped, wear a safety collar with ID and in Australia kept inside at night to protect wildlife. A brightly coloured collar can protect wildlife from domestic cat predation.

Pet insurance improves companion animal welfare

I have decided that pet insurance is a socialist concept. Sweden is a very socialist country. They pay high taxes and they are willing to do so because it improves society. It is a fairer society. And in Sweden pet insurance for dogs, I am told, is at 90% of the dog population. I am sure that it is not dissimilar for domestic cats. A 90% pet insurance rate is far above that of the UK which I believe is somewhere around 25%. In general, pet insurance uptake is quite low in part because it is uncompetitive compared to self-insurance which is a savings scheme run by the companion animal guardian.

However, I have decided that an important aspect of pet insurance is animal welfare. Pet insurance does two things. First it spreads the risk. If you are unfortunate cat owner and your cat is chronically ill out of pure bad luck for a long time but you have insurance then those heavy costs are paid for out of your insurance policy. Part of that policy is paid for by the lucky person who has a healthy cat or dog all their lives and never has to use the policy. Some of the money from the lucky person goes into helping the unlucky person. Pet insurance spreads the risk and therefore it has a socialist flavour. I don't think that this is something which has been raised very often.

But it certainly sounds more fair to me if an unlucky person and an unlucky cat or dog gets their vet bill paid for high quality treatment thanks to an insurance policy. If that person did not have insurance their cat or dog might suffer because they would not be treated adequately as the owner might not have sufficient funds.

Yes, of course, the person who has a policy and never uses it is out-of-pocket but they get what they want which is peace of mind. They do obtain some benefit, although not as much as they might have. But their luck means that their cat and dog is healthier and that they don't have to go to the veterinarian all the time.

Obviously, whether a companion animal is healthy or unhealthy is not always down to pure luck but a lot of the time it is. You can't be sure how things will pan out. You can take precautions and for example select a random bred cat over a purebred cat because random bred cats are more healthy in general than purebred cats but you can never be completely sure that your cat will be healthy for all or most of their lives. 

Luck plays a role and pet insurance provides a counterbalance against bad luck and it improves the health of companion animals through superior veterinary care provided more often and more promptly because there is no brake on paying the bill. Pet insurance also means that veterinarians get paid better which means they can afford better equipment which in turn means you end up with a virtuous circle of improvements. This is all paid for by cat and dog owners but the beneficiary is the patient: improved welfare for cats and dogs and other companion animals.

P.S. The picture is in the public domain in my view.

Cat cafés are struggling because of the pandemic

KitTea Cat café. Photo from the fundraising page.

Cat cafés are in the hospitality business. Well, they're actually in the cat rescue business as well but essentially they are in the hospitality business which is on its knees because of the coronavirus pandemic. The lockdown has pretty well stopped these businesses and social distancing has undermined them and the people work from home are less likely to visit cafés of any sort including cat cafés.

In this instance San Francisco's first and only cat café is in financial trouble and the owner is asking for help. KitTea Cat café in Hayes Valley opened in 2015. It is owned by Courtney Hatt who said that it was closed for much of the pandemic. It is now operating at a fraction of its normal levels and the income can nowhere near cover their expenses including a $10,000 rental. She wants to move to a cheaper place but the landlord won't release her from her five year lease.

San Francisco’s @kittea_sf is at risk of closing b/c they’ve had to cut back capacity during the pandemic.

Owner Courtney says they’re not being let out of their $10K a month lease.

They desperately need supplies & have @gofundmehttps://t.co/I9uyx5ywBR

(Me visiting in ‘19) pic.twitter.com/X4RMdFkYlJ

— Dion Lim (@DionLimTV) September 21, 2020

She became emotional when people offered to help. She needs food and supplies including cat litter. She has a Go Fund Me page if you'd like to contribute. It has raised a huge $43,000 at the date of this post. The anchor/reporter at ABC7 News, Dion Lim had visited the place and she tweeted about it, I guess with the intention of publicising their plight.

The major reason why the Internet is expanding rapidly and continuously

The major reason why the Internet is expanding rapidly and continuously is because Google wants it to be like that as they can make more money if the Internet is bigger. And the way they encourage the Internet to grow so rapidly is because their search engine penalises websites that do not constantly add fresh pages.

If you leave a website alone for several months it will basically die because Google's search engine will stop finding it or find it less often. Conversely, if you constantly add to a website with fresh pages Google's search engine likes it and it will tend to find the site more often. It will rank the pages higher in search results. The more pages you can add the better the search results will be provided the content is good. It's pretty much as simple as that.

So Google dictates the Internet. They manage it and what they want they get. If they want an expanding Internet they can manage that through their search engine as described. This is not a criticism of Google. If anything it is praising Google because it is probably a good thing that it does expand as by and large the Internet is beneficial to people.

It is interesting, though, to speculate how things could have been different. If Google's search engine rewarded sites which had been dormant for a year by ranking them at the top of the search results, Internet expansion would come to a grinding halt quite quickly. The whole complexion of the Internet, of how we live, and such phenomenon as social media online would have been entirely different if Google had set up their search engine differently. It's a thought worth bearing in mind because it is at the foundation of how we use the Internet. And that greatly affects our lives.

YouTube video makers are staging kitten rescues for money

I've been watching some cat and kitten rescues on YouTube. I thought I would catch up with what's going on in that marketplace. Immediately I smelled trouble; the two videos I saw made me doubt their veracity. They both appear to be staged. 

It is as of the film maker planned the whole thing like a mini-movie. Particularly the one on this page. It shows a kitten with a piece of cast-iron drainpipe around her body. This is a heavy piece of iron. The video maker walks up to the kitten who is struggling in what appears to be a part of a farm near some abandoned machinery. 

The filmmaker very, very slowly removes the cast-iron drainpipe from the kitten. It is done in the most elaborate and theatrical way. The moment is teased out over several minutes. It is quite ridiculous and it is shameful. The person uses one hand while the other holds the bloody camcorder! Shit. It is so crappy.

There is no way this kitten would end up with a piece of cast-iron drainpipe around her body unless it was put there by somebody. And I allege with complete conviction that it was put there by the filmmaker. Why would a kitten push their body through a piece of tight drainpipe like that? What was at the other end of it? What reward was there for the kitten to do it? How did the kitten manage to do it? They are all so unlikely as to be impossible to envisage.

If I'm correct, and I am convinced that I am correct,  this is shameful behaviour. This filmmaker is conning YouTube into believing that they are involved in genuine kitten rescue. They are conning Google AdSense who are paying them for adverts on their video. And they are conning the advertisers who want to place their adverts on their video. Finally, they are conning the public into believing it is genuine.

YouTube need to investigate this sort of thing because I believe that it is more widespread than people believe. The comments under the video indicate that those who have watched it don't understand what is going on. Nobody is asking the common sense question as to how this happened. As I said, it is likely that the only way it could happen is if it was staged.